based on what happened in ohio today, this might not be a problem that the republican party recognizes is a problem just yet. how long can they continue like this? that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow night. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." mitt romney got caught once again saying what he really thinks today and in a "last word" exclusive, we have the "new york times" reporter who heard him say it. >> i care about a hundred percent of the american people. >> mitt romney's press conference called. >> it's not their fault, it's somebody else's fault. >> obama, romney argued, had been very generous with black, hispanics and young votevoters. >> i think the surprise was some of the turnout, especially in the urban areas. >> paul ryan lost his hometown. >> he lost his hometown -- >> which is not a particularly urban place. >> they voted against him twice. >> losing never feels good.

>> president obama will hold his first press conference -- >> to discuss the looming fiscal cliff. >> will the fiscal cliff be the number one conversation piece? >> there's only so much we can say about this fiscal cliff/slope. >> i argued for a balanced approach. the majority of the voters agreed with me. >> i think they're popular ideas. >> i think the majority of voters agreed with me. >> clearly president obama won. >> losing never feels good. >> no more mr. nice guy. >> the president responds to questions about susan rice -- >> about the benghazi attacks. >> senator mccain and senator graham want to go after somebody, they should go after me. >> former cia director david petraeus will testify before the senate intelligence committee. >> general petraeus had an affair with his biographer. people are snapping up copies of

the book. >> it's so pathetic. >> the book is available in hard cover and extremely hard cover. today on an i'm sorry i lost conference call with top campaign don't oorors, mitt rom said the president won the election because he game african-american and latino voters, quote, gifts. abc news has this audio. >> what the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote. >> romney also said that the president's campaign focused on giving targeted groups a big gift so he made a big effort on small things. those small things, by the way,

add up to trillions of dollars. he said the president followed the old play book of wooing specific interest groups, especially the african-american community, the his it andic community and young people. mr. romney explained with targeted gifts and initiatives in each case they were very generous in what they gave those groups. he also said our strategy worked well with many people but for those who were given a specific gift, if you will, our strategy did not work terribly well. mitt military particularly cited the president's health care plan. you can imagine for somebody making 20,000 or 25,000 or 30,000 a year you're now going to get free health care, you're now going to have it, you're going to get free health care, particularly if you don't have

it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 for farmly. likewise with his it andic voters, free health care was a big plus. but in addition the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called dream act kids. with regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift, free contraceptives were very big with young college aged women and obama care, as you know, now 26 years of age or younger was now going to be part of their parents' plan and that was a big gift to young people. now we know what mitt romney is doing for three hours a day after the election. he's listening to this guy. >> small things beat big things yesterday. conservatism in my humble

opinion did not lose last night. it's just very difficult to beat santa claus. now, say what you want but romney did after a vision of traditional america. >> and in their postelection slowdown, mitt and ann are obviously having dinners on trays in front of the tv listening to this guy. >> the demographics are changing. it's not a traditional america anymore. and there are 50% of the voting public who want stuff. they want things. and who is going to give them things? president obama. >> joining me now, "new york times" reporter ashley parker, who was actually on the mitt romney conference call with his big donors today and msnnbc's joy reid and ari. was mitt romney aware that you

and possibly others got on to the call? >> no, i do not think he was aware. i think he thought he was just talking to members of his information finance team. >> we just heard a pretty good tape of abc. my suspicion is there will be more tape of this phone call coming out. >> i'm sure there will. i was on the call, an "l.a. times" reporter was on the call. a lot of that audio was in the stories that have already been published today. >> will there be any more surprising we'll learn about what he said on this call the reports that are out there pretty much capture it all? >> i think it hit the highlights where he was talking about the gifts president obama gave

african-american voters, h hispanic voters and young voters. and also a pollster, he felt that sandies, the storm, that occurred the week before the election made a difference. one, he said it allowed the president to look presidential. you know, he was sort of doing presidential duties and handling the storm. the second thing was that it took up a lot of the awaves. newhouse said the public was rightly focused on the storm but it didn't allow the romney campaign to prosecute their message. the third thing he said was president obama was a able to make use of his relationship with governor chris christie and behave in an elevated bipartisan way that governor romney had been trying to do. >> was there any whiff of bitterness with regard to the

reference it chris christie? >> no. on the call he mentioned it was a statement of fact. >> and what about responses from any of the big donors on the call? were there any complaints? were there any reactions from them at the notion that mitt romney used all their money in what was a losing effort? >> the donors on this call were not able to ask questions. i've heard gripes from donors privately but on this call someone on it described it to me as a spin and grin. it was the romney campaign kind of explaining why they felt they lost and also thanking the donors for what they said was a very good job and talking about the donors actually going forward, about maybe an annual meet organize monthly news letter so this group of people, they said, could shape the republican party to come. >> i would think you might have a reaction to this. >> that would be the most

expensive news letter in history. i thought i'd been black a long time. i didn't get my gifts. so i'm a little miffed with the barack obama white house. >> it might be under your pillow, under the christmas tree. >> i have a feeling chris christie might have gotten gifts before i did. i would think if you're trying to market a product, the product being the republican party, probably not a good idea to insult the following demographics you'd like to one day pursue, latinos, african-americans, young people. mitt romney has insulted everyone that the republican party operatives now want to win over. so i think the gift he might want to give his party is the gift of silence. >> let's talk about the rank stupidity of romney and the

candidate himself. how did he not know that others would be getting these tapes? this was at a big fund-raiser where he got betrayed in effect by videotape once before. at this point those donors have nothing before in letting ashley and others be involved. >> when your staff sent me ashley's articles, i hadn't seen the remarks yet. when i read them, it made me really angry. it made me feel like this guy who lost and has already had his time in the public eye and had his platform is coming back out to be racially divisive, to denigrate the president. i'm not the white house social secretary but if i were, i would say, mr. romney, you're now denigrating the public, you're spitting in the president's face, your invite to the white

house is revoked forever. he has here a world view that has become so synonymous with the government party that, government is just a transaction. you ask those people who are suffering from hurricane sandy and relying on whether it's chris christie or barack obama whether they're getting gifts. they're not getting gifts. they're relying on our government to do what it does best, which is look out for people. and then fourth on a narrower point, his electoral analysis is totally wrong zap. >> it's a real losers analysis. people over 55 went for romney. we spend as a government more on them than we do on the groups he mentioned. >> did you think he's oblivious

to the sense that you and others would be listening to this? >> alts week afrlt election and he's doing this postmortem and trying to figure out the numbers and what went wrong. i got the sense i don't think he was worried about reporters being on the call, i got the sense he was struggling to explain what happened to him. he actually said we expected to win, you expected to us win, what happened is still so upsetting to us that we can barely look to the future. that's what he seemed to be talking about on that call. >> coming up, what happens in vegas stays in vegas and what happens in the cia ends up on every web site in america? the last words intelligent correspondent who just happens

to be based in vegas will explain it all. >> and the senate has a new joe mccarthy, a republican senator who used the mccarthy model of character assassination today in lying about u.n. ambassador susan rice. he wasn't the only senator attacking susan rice today, but he told a provable lie that is something even joe mccarthy would have been reluctant to say. and that's tonight. aspirin, really? i haven't thought about aspirin for years. aspirin wouldn't really help my headache, i don't think.

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risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before investing. i've got one mandate. i've got a mandate to help middle class families and families that are working hard to try to get in the middle class. that's my mandate. that's what the american people said. they said work really hard to help us. don't worry about the politics of it, don't worry about the party interests, don't worry about the special interests. just work really hard to see if you can help us get ahead. >> that was president obama's answer when asked today at his presidential news conference if he had a mandate on taxes. and the president noted he has a decisive majority when it comes to raising taxes on the highesthighest

income earners. >> if there was one thing that everybody understood was a big difference between myself and mr. romney, it was when it comes to how we reduce our deficit, i argued for a balanced, responsible approach and part of that included making sure that the wealthiest americans pay a little bit more. more voters agreed with me on this issue than voted for me. >> president obama was also clear about what he was open to discussing with congressional leaders in the negotiations, which will start on friday, the thing the president won't consider, an extension of the bush tax rates for the top 2% and romney/ryan magical thinking about taxes. >> i think we can simplify our tax system, i think we can make it more efficient, we can eliminate loopholes and deductions, but what i'm not going to do is to extend bush

tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%. what i will not do is to have a process that is vague, that says we're going to sort of kind of raise revenue through dynamic score organize closing loopholes that have not been identified. >> treasury secretary tim geithner put that this way yesterday -- >> there's a lot of magical thinking about how much money can you raise from tax expenditures. a lot of people who have looked at that question and concluded i think incorrectly that there's huge amount of resource there is you can raise. i think that's just not true. >> joining me now, nia henderson of the washington and the assistant manager editor of "time" magazines. the republicans have been saying we might able to do something with deductions but deductions only, no rate changes.

it seems like tim geithner and the president are really double teaming that issue very strongly. >> i think they've drawn a line in the sand. can you see that from the statements today. this was arguably the biggest issue of the campaign. as the president said, most people do agree the rich should pay a higher percentage of taxes. i think making deductions work is going to be politically difficult. you have to get into things like the mortgage interest deductions. i think raising taxes on the rich is going to be something the president will hold the line on. >> the president again today called on the house of representatives to just pass the bill that the senate has passed already, with those rates and john boehner responded. >> the senate has already passed a law like this. democrats in the house are ready to pass a law like this and i hope republicans in the house come on board, too. we should not hold the middle

class hostage while we debate tax cuts for the wealthy. >> i think in stead of the house moving on the senate bill, the senate ought to move on the house bill. >> so the debate has been engaged. it's going to be an interesting conversation on friday to get it started. >> that's right. he'll have the senate leaders and house leaders over to talk about this. one of the things that was so clear from that press conference was that the president is saying let's move this forward, let's move this forward now. he is certainly realizing that when you look at the four years that he has ahead of him, really it about the next 18 months to two years. that's when he has a mandate that, when he has political capital to spend. quickly he also wants to forestall some of these tax hikes that could come as early as january. john boehner initially said, listen, president, it's time fur to lead. that's what you saw in that press conference, the president saying look at the map, look at my victory and get what and, oh,

yeah, guess what, i've won. >> we've officially renamed the fiscal cliff the fiscal curb. it's a little step down and you keep taking the steps so by the time you goat march or april, there's something significant happening but not right away. but there's a tricky thing here. both sides want to call it a cliff because both sides need drama in order to drive the urgency of their position but i'm wondering if at some point the president doesn't soften this as we get into late december and start to say to people, well, on the first week of january, you're going u just going to see a little step. and we will have time to fix it retroactively. >> i think that's probably what you will hear. i think ultimately this is going to be some kind of compromise. the fiscal cliff, it would be about $6 hup billion worth of tax cuts. i think it is going to be

softened. there are no political points to be gained from getting the u.s. at the cliff, from going to default as we saw a year and a half ago. also markets are responding to the fact that and how that could be cut or not but can we see political cohesion? if the president can't move forward on this issue, the rest of his agenda is going to become more difficult. >> and because of the way this package of cuts and tax increases is build that hits on january 1st, they can be negotiated at the same time, which is to say republicans have straits in what the so they may end up making decisions, that i will live with what the president wants on taxation so i can get what i want on defense cuts. >> that's right. you heard, for instance, bill crystal, essentially tell

republicans to say, listen, that they should accept this deal from obama, the higher tax rates on the rich of course that was something that was backed up by 60% to 70% of people who voted, some of whom were republican said yes, let's take that deal. so i think you're right. they're looking at all of these issues been i think there will be something of a meeting of the minds overs next two months and then there will probably be a sense that later on some of these bigger issues will also be taken up. >> thank you both for joining me tonight. >> thank you. >> coming up, penn is here, as you may have noticed. as his new explains, he has been the subject of a black male scheme, which provoked an fbi investigation, which makes him the perfect analyst for the petraeus affair. and john mccain and his bff

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two senators who had no problem voting for condoleezza rice for secretary of state now say they will oppose u.n. ambassador susan rice if these nominated. that's next. and later, what david petraeus

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in the spotlight tonight president obama is not going to let republican senators john mccain and lindsay graham stop him from nominating whoever he thinks is the best candidate to be his next secretary of state. if you nominate susan rice, they will do everything in their power to block her nomination. >> she made an appearance at the request of the white house in which she gave her best

understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her. if senator mccain and senator graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. and i'm happy to have that discussion with them. but for them to go after the u.n. ambassador, who had nothing to do with benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous. when they go after the u.n. ambassador apparently because they think she's an easy target, then they've got a problem with me. and should i choose, if i think that she would be the best person to serve america in the capacity of the state department, then i will nominate

her. >> after the president's news conference, senator graham immediately responded with this released statement. >> mr. president, don't think for one minute i don't hold you ultimately responsible for benghazi. i think you failed as commander in chief before, during and after the attack. given what i know now, i have no intention of promoting anyone who is up to their eyeballs in the benghazi debacle. joining me is jim frederick and karen. jim, is the u.n. ambassador up to her eyeballs in the benghazi debacle, as lindsay graham would put it? >> no. >> is she up to her toe nails? is she in it at all? >> she had nothing to do with this. if there was any judgment error involved, there is a question of why was she on the morning programs talking about something that wasn't really in her lane.

a lot of the things that she has been described as saying that, this was a spontaneous uprising, if you go back and look at what she said, she didn't actually say that. she said the spontaneous uprising was used as a cover for a concerted attack. a lot of the things that are being put into her mouth she didn't actually say but it's interesting this is being used as a political scalp by the republicans who wooant somebodyo blame for benghazi. it's unfortunate that susan rice, who is a qualified secretary of state candidate would be held out, to be pilloried in this way. it's worth noting the republicans probably don't have enough votes to get in the way of a nomination and it's also interesting that obama, he really is happy that this election is over because i've never seen him quite so forceful or genuinely outraged in quite some time. >> have we ever -- has any senator ever used a standard like this on a possible

secretary of state nomination before, that that nominee may have at some point said something on tv that they disagree with and cannot prove one way or the other? >> yeah. she might have had a bad day but this does not disqualify her from being secretary of state. and there are intelligence failures after intelligence failures after intelligence failures when condoleezza rice was up for similar positions. to answer your question, no, not that i'm aware of has any nominatino nomination actually been blocked. >> my theory of the case is they really want scott brown back in the senate. what they're trying to do is block susan rice so the president will then go to senator kerrey, opening up that senate seat in massachusetts to

an election about 150 days after that opening occurs. >> if that's true, then attacking susan rice is quite disgusting behavior. i've actually known susan since the clinton administration and this is quite offensive what they're doing here. there was intelligence available. somebody had to go out. she went out based on the intelligence and as jim said, when you go back and you look at what she said, she did caveat that based on what was known at the time. and it was these two men, as you point out, who supported another dr. rice for secretary of state who had basically gone around misleading us about weapons of mass destruction. they certainly didn't have a problem with that. in this case susan was givens intelligence that even conde rice herself it was complicated and hard to know where things were going to shake out. if we're going to talk about anybody's behavior in this,

jason chaff it's and darrell isa, who have to the only outed a covert operation, but they've endangered the lives of libyans who are working with us. let's look at their behavior. >> if these guys are trying to steer the nomination to massachusetts senator conquerry, so that the seat opens up so they can get scott brown back in the senate, it seems like the technique they're using as of today is almost forcing the president's hand on ambassador rice. it's almost the kind of thing that makes him say, well, okay, that tips it, i'm definitely going with ambassador rice. >> that certainly was my read of his tone. i think the president is fully aware if those men want to have that fight attacking this woman, let's do it, let's go there. that is a good fight for him to have. it also outs them right on the block ne have no intention of

working with this president of getting anything done. >> thank you both for joining me tonight. >> coming up, more on john mccain and lindsay graham, susan rice, condoleezza rice and sarah palin. they're all in the rewrite. and later, america's most famous juggler will teach david petraeus what he should have known about juggling. [ male announcer ] free windows 8 training from your son. can you help me with something? nope! good talk.

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two united states senators are rewriting their standards for voting for a nominee for secretary of state. bffs john mccain and lindsay graham decided they can't vote for any no. knee for secretary of state who has said anything on tv the truth of which cannot be proven beyond their standards of reasonable doubt. the shorter way to explain their standard is they can't vote for anyone named susan rice. >> susan rice seem to be the front-runner for secretary of state. you said last night will you do everything to stop her nomination mch why?

>> she's not qualified. anyone who goes on television in response five days later, we're all responsible for what we say and do. she is responsible to the senate of the united states. we have our responsibilities for advise and consent. >> this is about the role she played around four dead americans when it seems to be that the story coming out of the administration and she's the point person is so disconnected from reality and i don't trust her. i think she knew better and if she didn't know better -- i don't think she deserves to be promoted. i am dead set on making sure we don't promote anybody that was an essential player in the benghazi debacle. >> in order to sound like they actually have a reason to oppose susan rice for secretary of state, they have to lie about

her. you just heard little lindsay gram lying joe mccarthy style about susan rice, calling her "an essential player in the benghazi debacle." the united states ambassador to the united nations had absolutely nothing to do with the response to the attack in benghazi. lindsay graham actually has the sleazy audacity to call her an essential player in those events. she was no more an essential player in what happened in libya than lindsay graham and john mccain were. at 11:51 this morning when lindsay graham told that lie about ambassador susan rice, little lindsay graham, and i speak not of his physical stature, i speak of the size of this tiny man's character, little lindsay graham became the senate's new joe mccarthy.

the word liar belongs before his name now instead of senator until lindsay graham retracts that lie, until he says i was wrong to call ambassador right, quote, an essential player in the benghazi debacle. that lie cannot stand. the media cannot allow it to stand, but we know better. we can be assured that the media will, for the most part, actually allow it to stand. liar lindsey graham will continue to be invited on tv shows where that statement will not be called a lie. it may be challenged, but it will not be called a lie. liar lindsay graham, of course, has an open invitation to come on this program and retract his lie or try to get away with it again and see how that works out for him here. liar lindsey graham and john

mccain are the same who had no problem for another named rice, after she failed miserably as george bush's national security adviser, after she and everyone else in the bush administration misread the intelligence on iraq's weapons of mass destruction, as it turned out nonexistent weapons of mass destruction programs. they had no problem voting her after she went on television and raised the specter of a mushroom cloud of an attack launched by iraq. no more dimented thing has ever been publicly said by a national security adviser, save for every word ever spoken by henry kissinger about vietnam. when they voted for condoleezza rice for secretary of state, they knew that everything condoleezza rice said about iraq on television before the iraq war was wrong.

they did not exact an apology from her in exchange for their votes for secretary of state. today liar lindsay graham said this about the comparison between susan rice and condoleezza rice. >> when it comes to condoleezza rice, we're not the only country that thought he was trying to get weapons of mass destruction. >> so the graham rule is it's okay for highly placed foreign policy players in an administration to be wrong about something they say on tv involving intelligence as long as other people are wrong, too, especially people in other countries. in his nakedly political and entirely dishonorable prosecution of susan rice today, john mccain actually said this -- >> we're all responsible for what we say and what we do. >> he obviously meant to add

except condoleezza rice and anyone in any republican administration. we're all responsible for what we say and what we do. really? from the guy who said this -- >> that old beach boy song bomb iran, bomb, bomb, bomb -- anyway. >> yeah, anyway. we're all responsible for what we say and what we do. john mccain responsible for what we say and what we do? the guy who was trying to get sarah palin important is in as vice president of the united states, a heart beat away from the presidency. john mccain did that. it was the greatest act of sheer irresponsibility i have ever seen in a presidential candidate. here is something that john mccain has never once said about

sarah palin. >> we're all responsible for what we say and what we do. >> he has never said that. never once said that sarah palin has ever, ever said anything that perhaps she shouldn't have said. he defended every word sarah palin said as his choice to be vice president of the united states, including this -- >> alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, russia, and on our other side the land boundary that we have with canada. it's funny that a comment like that was kind of made to -- i don't know, you know, as putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the united states of america, where do they go? it's alaska. it just right over the border. >> john mccain and his fellow

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i have no evidence at this point from what i've soeen that classified information was disclosed that would jeopardize our national security. we are safer because of the work that dave petraeus has done and my main hope right now is that he and his family are able to move on and that this ends up being a single side note on what

has otherwise been an extraordinary career. >> that was president obama speaking publicly about general david petraeus's problems with sex, lies and e-mail. tonight we found out the name of jill kelley's shirtless fbi agent friend who helped get this whole investigation started, the investigation into broadwell's e-mail, frederick humphreys. . he told house majority leader kantor about the investigation. kantor was asked about this during his press conference today. >> i received information from an individual who i had not met before, did not know. the information that was sent to me sounded to me as if there was a potential for a national

security vulnerability. i had no way of corroborating the story that i was told and felt that the best thing to do at the time was not to politicize it but to put national security first. >> penn, i know you doesn't follow every twist and turn in washington. that guy you were just watching, eric cantor, he has not yet been caught in a sex scandal. there's about a dozen of them who have not actually yet -- >> okay. >> your new book "every day is an atheist holiday," the promo will be that i just kind of leave it here. i'll lean on it. >> thank you. >> it has in here a story of penn being blackmailed for what includes the sexual component and you going straight to the

fbi. >> i also am the person most protected about blackmail possible. i am completely honest with my wife about everything. >> here's a moment i remember on bill maher's show, there was some sex scandal out there in washington and you on the show said i have done everything that everyone in every sexual scandal is accused of, i have done it. >> i got this phone call blackmailing me, someone had gotten all the information from my hard drive, had asked me for money. >> e-mails. >> the magic secrets from the penn and teller show never sent an e-mail. apparently that's more important than this. i knew that my wife wouldn't be upset, i knew it wouldn't change my career at all. you know the first thing i did was call you and then threw up.

the pressure on you when you're being blackmailed is amazing. i called the fbi immediately. they said your wife won't be upset and this won't hurt your public image and i said, yes, but people shouldn't be blackmailing other people. hearing about this, i should have all these kind of smarmy opinions on it but all i think about it is what you feel, even when you're safe when someone knows personal stuff about you is horrifying. it's terrify ing. >> but also one of the points you make in this book and elsewhere that the horrible scandal at the center of this story is really just people not being honest with each other, husbands and wives not being honest with each other about the way they live their lives. >> and also the rest of us not admitting. i think all of this sex talk in sex happened all the time throughout history with everybody. we just have an electronic trail

on it now. we can follow it all. and i think we should all just kind of grow up a little bit and say we all like having sex and that's okay. >> but then here's the thing that gets me. you're the cia director and you know we aren't yet in that 22nd century when we all become french and we're all cool with all this stuff. since we're not there, you are crazy enough as cia director to have all these e-mails out there, all this -- >> on a gmail account. don't they have something that stands for gman has a gmail account. don't they have certainly encrypted? i know they did that weird little put it in a draft so it doesn't go across. >> all he actually had to do to have no real record of it was just use the telephone. then will their would be some phone numbers. it's his biographer. they're going to